Some of my most interesting work in in helping clients create effective processes for participative strategy. The traditional approach to strategy is that it is generated in the executive suite or by highly-paid consultants, then it is communicated to staff, usually rather ineffectively.
There is an increasing recognition that many people across the organization have invaluable insights into industry change, competition, client requirements, innovation and other issues that will help shape strategy. The challenge is in establishing processes that enable broad-based participation in a useful way, tapping ideas and generating positive energy for change.
In some cases, for example as I helped a global real-estate development company to implement, this can be framed in a fun competition format, assisting teams to generate visions of where the company can go. In other cases, a formal process can be created to expose staff across the company to strategic issues, then generating, capturing, filtering, and applying their insights to corporate strategy, as I did for a large financial services company.
Here is an excerpt from Chapter 7 of my book Living Networks providing some of the broader issues to address in implementing participative strategy.
CREATING PARTICIPATIVE STRATEGY
The Work-Out process is one of General Electric’s standard practices. This brings together 40 to 100 people in a “town meeting” to discuss specific issues, and make firm recommendations. Once the issues that need to be addressed have been identified, these are clearly defined by a team, and attendees for the meeting are selected from a range of functions and managerial levels. The team meet in an offsite location for usually three days, commencing with a briefing by the relevant executive, who then leaves. The participants break into a number of teams, and in a structured process come up with clear recommendations. At the end these are presented to the senior manager, who must make a decision on the spot whether to proceed. Work-Out sessions are routinely run across General Electric’s divisions, and often include customers and suppliers.
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More on personal reputation systems – video interview of Travis Kalanick
By Ross DawsonFollowing up on my post Personal reputation systems are about to take off… but the next start-up won’t last, taking off on Techcrunch’s pre-announcement of a new personal reputation start-up, Brad King pointed me to this very interesting video he took of investor Travis Kalanick, who is almost certainly talking about the same start-up. He makes some very interesting comments, not least about how pissed off everyone is going to be about this.
Personal reputation systems are about to take off… but the next start-up won’t last
By Ross DawsonMichael Arrington of Techcrunch writes that this week a start-up will launch that is “effectively Yelp for people,” and promises detailed coverage in the next few days.
This is of great interest, not least because our own start-up Repyoot will be launching in public beta in the next couple of weeks, starting as an influence ratings engine within a limited domain, and intending to evolve into a broad-based reputation engine for people.
The thrust of Arrington’s article is that if we are all open to anonymous feedback…
…we will have to change how we judge reputation.
In 2007 I expressed similar sentiments in Watch out! The intimate details of your life will be visible forever more…, saying
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New ventures in political crowdsourcing
By Ross DawsonUser-contributed content is often far more up-to-date than other sources. I just stumbled across some interesting current news while browsing through Wikipedia’s List of crowdsourcing projects.
The UK Conservative Party has launched Your Budget Response 2010, a website that is intended to allow anyone to identify problems, oversights and issues in the government’s budget, to fuel the Conservative Party’s response to the budget.
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3 steps to creating participative strategy processes in organizations
By Ross DawsonSome of my most interesting work in in helping clients create effective processes for participative strategy. The traditional approach to strategy is that it is generated in the executive suite or by highly-paid consultants, then it is communicated to staff, usually rather ineffectively.
There is an increasing recognition that many people across the organization have invaluable insights into industry change, competition, client requirements, innovation and other issues that will help shape strategy. The challenge is in establishing processes that enable broad-based participation in a useful way, tapping ideas and generating positive energy for change.
In some cases, for example as I helped a global real-estate development company to implement, this can be framed in a fun competition format, assisting teams to generate visions of where the company can go. In other cases, a formal process can be created to expose staff across the company to strategic issues, then generating, capturing, filtering, and applying their insights to corporate strategy, as I did for a large financial services company.
Here is an excerpt from Chapter 7 of my book Living Networks providing some of the broader issues to address in implementing participative strategy.
CREATING PARTICIPATIVE STRATEGY
The Work-Out process is one of General Electric’s standard practices. This brings together 40 to 100 people in a “town meeting” to discuss specific issues, and make firm recommendations. Once the issues that need to be addressed have been identified, these are clearly defined by a team, and attendees for the meeting are selected from a range of functions and managerial levels. The team meet in an offsite location for usually three days, commencing with a briefing by the relevant executive, who then leaves. The participants break into a number of teams, and in a structured process come up with clear recommendations. At the end these are presented to the senior manager, who must make a decision on the spot whether to proceed. Work-Out sessions are routinely run across General Electric’s divisions, and often include customers and suppliers.
Read more →
New research: Microblogging Inside and Outside the Workplace
By Ross DawsonI just got off the phone with Kate Ehrlich of IBM Research, who I’ve known for many years and was one my co-authors for our California Management Review article Managing Collaboration: Improving Team Effectiveness through a Network Perspective.
We had a great discussion about a variety of common interests, including where things are going in using social network analysis for performance improvement, and the value of social media in sales teams. Kate shared with me some recent research she has done with the use of microblogging inside and outside the enterprise, which has been written up as a paper titled Microblogging Inside and Outside the Workplace – it’s well worth a read.
IBM established BlueTwit some time ago as an internal microblogging tool, and its employees also use Twitter. As such, they were able to do research comparing how staff used microblogging for internal and external audiences.
Source: Microblogging Inside and Outside the Workplace
The research showed that Twitter is used more for sharing information and status updates, while the internal tool was used more for asking questions and directed interaction.
The study also included a qualitative component of interviews with IBM employees on how they used the microblogging tools. Below are the motivations and perspectives identified in the studies, together with representative quotes. See the article for the detailed research.
WHAT EMPLOYEES SAY ABOUT MICROBLOGGING
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6 Steps in Enterprise 2.0 Governance Projects
By Ross DawsonI believe that governance is at the heart of effective Enterprise 2.0 implementation. While many shy away at the term, mainly because governance is usually focused on risk and limitations, I see it differently. True governance is just as much about ensuring that opportunities are taken as it is as about containing risk. Governance, done well, is an enabler of innovation, providing parameters, guidelines and policies that address risks, and allow the greatest possible scope for experimentation and value creation.
As such most of my client work on Enterprise 2.0 is helping executives to frame governance and develop effective strategies. Advanced Human Technologies doesn’t do implementation; we work with partners for the nitty-gritty of larger projects. We believe that the greatest value creation is getting the frame right. Everything else flows from that.
The chapter on governance in my book Implementing Enterprise 2.0 is available for free download from the book website. However I thought it was also worth excerpting the chapter, as below. This section describes a typical Enterprise 2.0 governance process. Of course projects must be always tailored to the situation, addressing issues including organizational culture and existing processes.
SIX STEPS IN A TYPICAL GOVERNANCE PROCESS
1. Nominate a project leader and project sponsor
Creating a governance framework is a significant initiative that requires access to key stakeholders. A senior executive project sponsor should be named who will facilitate access to resources and people where required. The project leader can be either an internal manager with the appropriate skills and understanding of the organization, or an external consultant who has the benefit of independence from organizational politics.
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Essential capabilities: Aligning cultures and processes across blurred organizational boundaries
By Ross DawsonOn my earlier post on Social CRM Larry Irons asked a great question about how organizations can engage effectively with their customers and partners when much of their customer support is outsourced.
While there are no easy answers, there are two organizational capabilities that are increasingly critical for success. The first is developing clear strategies for what should be done inside the organization, and what should be done outside. These are difficult decisions to make, and even harder to implement well.
The second capability is aligning business processes with your external partners. In the following excerpt from Chapter 3 of Living Networks (available for download here), I describe the approaches call center giant Convergys takes to try to align culture and process with its clients.
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5 ways to add value to information
By Ross DawsonAs I prepare a presentation to the senior staff at one of Australia’s more innovative universities later this week I just had a glance at the slides to a keynote I did back in 2002 to the Australian Library and Information Association. I used the image below showing five ways to add value to information. It still makes sense.
Social CRM and disrupting analyst business models
By Ross DawsonI recently had a chat with R “Ray” Wang of Altimeter Group about what we’re up to and our respective business models. Among other things, Ray said that Altimeter wants to work in new spaces that others aren’t covering. ERP is boring. But Social CRM, for example, is on the leading edge of where value is being created, but traditional analyst firms are not working.
As a recent entrant to the market (the firm was founded in July 2008 by Charlene Li and now has 7 partners), Altimeter has the flexibility to use different approaches to the existing large firms. In this case, instead of charging in the thousands of dollars for a cutting-edge analyst report, it has launched Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management for free, enabling anyone to embed it on their own site, as I have below.
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Key management trend: Reputation management
By Ross DawsonI was recently interviewed for a report created by the executive forum Vistage, titled 12 Trends That Will Define Business in the “New Normal”.
One of the key trends covered in the report in which they drew on my thoughts is reputation management, excerpted below.